The genetically improved farmed tilapia (GIFT) strain of Nile tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus) developed by The WorldFish Center and partners, is raising the living standards of Sri Lanka’s poor people and contributing to gender equality in the country’s rural areas. So far, the GIFT fish have undergone four generations of selection in Sri Lanka and now grow faster and have higher survival rates than local tilapia stocks.
Disseminating GIFT
WorldFish scientists have designed a national breeding structure to multiply and disseminate the improved fish to end users in Sri Lanka. GIFT fish are transferred to a network of hatcheries, which in turn produce high-quality seed that are distributed to farmers and community-based organizations. Currently, about 30 hatcheries and 230 community-based organizations and farmers have received GIFT.
As well as increasing the income of Sri Lankan farmers and creating employment for women in rural areas, the GIFT strain is now preferred to the local stocks in culture systems across the country.
Increasing fish production
In 2000, only 10% of the country’s fish production came from inland fisheries and aquaculture, a rate that increased to 13.5% in 2010. Similarly, freshwater fish production increased from 36,700 to 51,390 metric tons during the same period.
The development of aquaculture in Sri Lanka is particularly important, since fish account for up to 70% of the total animal protein consumption in the country. There is a high demand in rural and urban markets for freshwater fish to alleviate malnutrition and poverty, especially in the inland areas of Sri Lanka.
To date, the GIFT strain has been formally disseminated to 14 national government agencies and is being widely cultured in many Asian and Latin American countries. In the Philippines, GIFT and GIFT-derived strains account for about 75% of total tilapia production.
The GIFT Strain
The GIFT strain was developed by the Genetic Improvement of Farmed Tilapia (GIFT) project, which involved The WorldFish Center, several partner countries in Asia, and Norway. GIFT has shown a remarkable genetic gain in growth rate (exceeding 80%) and has out–performed other strains being exploited in a variety of farming systems in Asia. Adoption of the GIFT strain in several Asian countries has increased production, lowered costs, increased consumption and in some cases improved the overall nutritional status of the sectors of the population involved.
The process used to develop the GIFT strain is known as selective breeding. It uses naturally existing variation in the population, increasing the frequency of the genes that are favorable to farming. It is different from transgenesis, which results in genetically modified organisms and entails human intervention in the introduction of foreign genetic material (DNA) into a host genome.
Read more “GIFT Tilapia Raise Culture Efficiency in Sri Lanka”
Photo credit: The WorldFish Center